First meme in a while, swunked from aphoenix2007

[fpb]

Comment on this entry and I will...

1) Tell you why I friended you
2) Associate you with a song/movie
3) Tell a random fact about you
4) Tell a first memory about you
5) Associate you with an animal/fruit
6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you
7) Show you my favourite user pic of yours
8) In retort, you MUST spead this disease in your LJ

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

1) Oddly enough, our first encounter was quite a donnybrook. (Then again, when you consider our respective tempers and views, that is not so odd.) I was angry when some of thepreciouss' so-called friends laid into her over her distaste for homosexuality, and I tried to defend her, and you somehow got in the way. Looking back, that has to have been some sort of misunderstanding. Then I got to know you in Stephanie's blog, and when you said that, though no Catholic, you agreed with condemning people who picked and chose what they wanted to believe, I asked if I could friend you. And I haven't regretted it since.
2) For some reason, I associate you with the forests of North America. So, something woody - Sergeant York, perhaps, since it is about a man of great integrity.
3) On one or two occasions, I posted on something that you had intended to post on, and you then gave up on your own post. I think that is letting yourself be unnecessarily cowed - first, I am neither infallible nor all-covering, and you would certainly be able to say things I had not thought of; and, second, our f-lists do not overlap that much, and you can surely reach people I do not know.
4) You were a curiously different note on Stephanie's blog, where every other poster was female and college-age.
5) Something woody and pleasant... I don't know. Maple syrup is not really a fruit, but... Or beavers, were it not for the nasty pun.
6) Tell me something about your early years and education.
7) They are all nice, but the one with the black and white cow is funny.

Re: #6

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

I was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1970. My first few years were spent living in a small town called Summerville, closer to the coast. I remember a good deal from those times. Most of the time I was just playing with my sister, my dog Heinrich (a purebred doberman) or my friends at the daycare. When I was five my family moved up to York, South Carolina, where my father was from and where his parents lived. We moved in just a few houses down from them. In York, until 1986, my childhood was pretty normal in a Norman Rockwell sort of way. It was the type of small town America the painter immortalized.

My grandparents and paternal great-grandmother helped raise me. Having been very active and integral to the community for over 50 years at that time, my grandparents had friends who also helped look after me when I was out and about in town, at school or wherever. (I never knew this until I was probably about 30 years old.)

My parents divorced when I was 13. My father married a detestable woman very soon after the ink was dry, and my mother married a few years later. When she married we moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That was a little rough at first, but I fit right in very quickly. I did well in school, and I did exceptionally well in theatre since Oak Ridge had (and still has) a remarkably good community theatre. In 1988, I graduated high school and went on to college.

As far as education goes, I was bright but often unfocused. So I did marvelously well in subjects in which I was interested (literature, language, sciences, history) and poorly in mathematics. I graduated in the top 20% of my class, in a nationally-recognized high school program out of almost 800 students, and I went on to do pretty well in college -- except for those times I clashed with my professors over their interpretations of little things, like the Constitution of the United States, the Scriptures, what constitutes evil, democracy, etc. (Those clashes cost me three classes where the professor told me I was going to fail, and I did, despite my actual grades.) I tried sometimes to "play the game", but I rarely could for long. Lying doesn't come easy to me, especially on important things like principle.

Re: #6

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

I returned to the are, to Rock Hill, in January of '89 to go to Winthrop. Toss a few name my way, but honestly, I didn't know many Rock Hill folks before then. I'll be happy to see who we may have in common. I'm always up for The Name Game.

Re: #6

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

I knew Chris Wagner. The other names don't ring any bells.

I went to grade school with him, and I went to high school with him, until I moved to Oak Ridge in '86. I saw him several years later at Winthrop. By that time he'd re-adopted his given name, Hans, and was wandering around and about with another friend of ours from school, John Buchanan.

Re: #6

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Two people - very fine people, too - are born in the same year in the same area. They move around the same towns and know at least one person in common. And yet, in order to get to meet each other, they go through my blog. Somehow, I like this a lot. Makes one feel useful.

Re: #6

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd heard he was in the military, but that's all I knew.